If you work for 40 years, chances are you will have accumulated some assets. I'm not sure that "sell your house and cars to pay for food" is a policy that will be popular.
Equally those same people have paid taxes for 40 years, paid into social security (to the benefit of their elders) and so on.
Keeping them in the work-force is largely undesirable. A job occupied by a 70 year old is a job not occupied by someone younger. If retirement age was say 80 instead of 60, there would be 25% fewer jobs to go around. (using imprecise simple math).
Look, most all of us will get old and eventually claim on social security or whatever. Politically just "ending that" is pretty much a non-starter to anyone who has been contributing for any length of time. Even fiddling with the edges of it (raising the retirement age) will get you voted out of office.
>... If retirement age was say 80 instead of 60, there would be 25% fewer jobs to go around. (using imprecise simple math).
Economists refer to this idea as the lump of labour fallacy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
If economists believe it, it must be true:).
More seriously though, it's not as simple as 25% fewer jobs, or an economy that grows 25%. For example the number of elected positions is pretty fixed, and all those octogenarians in the senate are certainly blocking younger talent.
Politics may be an extreme example, but lots of other jobs are "proportional". There's a fixed number of plumbing jobs (per million head of population) so adding 25% more plumbers dilutes the plumbing pool. A boon in construction would drive up the demand for plumbers, but construction booms come and go.
The "economy" is (again simplistically) a measure of money flow. It doesn't really measure "production" as much as it measures "cash velocity". As such having a retired tranche spending all day long is a good thing.
And yes, more labor would lead to a growing economy. But a lot of that growth is in "poor quality" jobs (aka service level jobs) not "new production".
In other words the economy "grows" if money changes hands quickly. The standard of living though is more tied to "production".
Take, for example, health care. The sector can grow 25% by adding more admin staff, claims evaluators etc. None of which results in better health outcomes. Or it can grow by building hospitals, training doctors and nurses. Both increase the economy, both offer more jobs, but only one leads to a higher standard of health.
In truth the current economy is built around the customers free time. From music, movies and tv, to sports, travel, phones, social media, online advertising and sales, deliveries (of goods or people), restaurants (fast or slow), home improvement, it's all about monetizing free time.
Having a large customer base with nothing but free time is what makes it all work.
> If retirement age was say 80 instead of 60, there would be 25% fewer jobs to go around.
By that logic, when the population was 25% less than it is now (~1980s), there was a job for everyone.
> Keeping them in the work-force is largely undesirable.
That presumes there are a fixed number of jobs. Anyone can create a job, even doing simple things like going door to door and offering to mow the lawn.
Sure, in theory. But if that was economically viable, why isn’t anyone doing it?
People do it all the time. One man companies are commonplace. They come to my door now and then, selling magazine subscriptions, offering to clean my driveway, do yard work, tree trimming, exterminating, carry off junk, do estate sales for you, and so forth.
I remember one guy who had a one man outfit that replaced broken garage door springs. It was all he did. He had a trunk full of springs.
Any decent real estate agent has a rolodex of these people, who are hired to do what is necessary to prep a house for sale.